


A gift from Fate

by Penandpaper83



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28334301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penandpaper83/pseuds/Penandpaper83
Summary: My take on the Ninth Doctor's early days after regenerating, leading up to him meeting Rose and deciding that it's imperative that she join him on his travels.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	A gift from Fate

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short little story that began as a plot bunny a year or so ago after getting the itch to watch the 50th anniversary again. I always wondered about Nine before we meet him in 'Rose', so please enjoy my little creative license. This story is dedicated as a gift to the wonderful author that I have the privilege to beta read for - vaiken (go check out her work by the way!) - after I learned of some happy news. So please enjoy!

_“No more.”_

The Doctor blinked a few times and looked around as his vision began to clear. How did he get back to the Tardis, when his last recollection was the barn with the Moment. When he was about to… Did he actually do it? No, couldn’t have… He was still alive. He was meant to perish with his people. 

_“If you do this, if you kill them all, then that’s the consequence. You live.”_

Her warning floated in on a memory that was afloat in a sea of hazy memories that he didn’t remember making. So, he must have done the deed. But why was he knocked out? Was the explosion that effective or maybe… Just maybe it failed, and he was knocked out because of it? He jumped up to the console and started frantically pushing buttons and pulling levers, ignoring the fact that his hands looked different. 

When his faithful ship arrived at the coordinates, he flung open the doors expectantly. But at the empty space where Gallifrey once stood taunted him, he felt his stomach drop and his hearts stutter. It was gone. His home was gone. He slaughtered them all, and now he must pay his penance. She had warned him this would happen, and he must have decided that it was worth it if he took the Daleks down as well.

After closing the doors to the now empty battleground, he moved the Tardis and himself to an unknown corner of the Universe. There he sat for… Well, he couldn’t exactly say for sure how long he stayed put. Months. Years maybe? He had changed his outfit after figuring out that using the moment made him regenerate. Gone was the war weary man, and in his place was a man that looked like he’s seen a thing or two. Hah! Fate had a sense of humor it seemed. He banished his soldier ‘uniform’ to some dark corner of the wardrobe, after each attempt to chuck it into space ended with the clothes heaped onto his captain’s chair.

Right. So now the Tardis was punishing him for destroying her home too. 

A jumper, dark black jeans and boots matched his dark mood. The only thing he kept from his previous incarnation was his leather coat. He would never be able to fully explain why he kept it, but just that it felt right.

But things changed one day. And looking back on it long after he had changed his face again, he wasn’t sure who to thank: his beloved Tardis that seemed to know everything, or the Universe being maybe just a tiny bit forgiving for what he did. 

His attention had been drawn, and okay so maybe it took him a while to pay attention to his console - he was still in a state of depression after all, to the fact that the Nestene Consciousness was in London, England for some reason. And worse of it: Autons were causing shop window dummies to come alive and harm people. He scowled at that. He had always considered Earth his adopted home, and now with his own planet gone, it was imperative that Earth remain safe always.

“You picked the wrong planet to set up shop, mate,” the Doctor mumbled as he fiddled with the wiring on his ‘solution’ to the problem. When he finished, he picked it up and grinned at his work. Completely ignoring how it seemed that his first choice of resolution once again involved an explosive device… 

He had just placed the bomb after ensuring Hendriks was complete and was headed off to make things go boom, hopefully nipping this whole Auton business in the bud. But then he heard a female’s voice echo.

“Right. I’ve got the joke. Whose idea was this?”

The Doctor sighed. He was so sure that he cleared the building, even watched people leave through the front doors. Well, he couldn’t just leave her there when he was about to blow the place up. 

“Derek, is this you?”

She was definitely closer now, and a bit more panicked by the sounds of the squeaking plastic dummies that were undoubtedly getting closer as well. He ducked around the corner and grabbed her hand only saying “Run!” before pulling her along to safety. 

After wrestling with a dummy arm to get the elevator doors closed, he had tossed it behind him. After her presumption that this could have been some student prank for some odd reason (okay, he might have been a bit impressed at the logic she presented), he had turned around briefly and couldn’t believe his eyes. 

It was her… Or rather, a close enough resemblance to the Moment. Was she there to haunt him for his crime? Was that part of the punishment she warned him with? He kept his detached demeanor as he questioned her thinking, while carefully looking back at her occasionally.

They shared a back and forth as she had question after question. When he finally ushered her out of the side door by announcing his plan and showing the detonator, he paused after closing the door. He had to know her name for his own sanity.

“I’m the Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Rose.”

“Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!” 

He shut the door on her again and hurried off to finish his task. _“I chose this face and form especially for you. I think I’m called Rose Tyler,”_ her words drifted from some place in his memory and he really didn’t want to consider the high number of coincidences currently in play. 

After he blew up Hendriks, he sat back in the Tardis and reflected on the day’s events, however only briefly thinking about the young lady he met earlier this evening. The entire time they were talking, he tried to ignore that intuition that came with the appearance of someone who would be an excellent companion and travel buddy. 

“Nope. Never doing that again, ruined enough lives thank you very much!” he declared to the empty room.

Fate, however, had apparently decided otherwise. 

Following a signal from that plastic arm from the elevator led him right to Rose’s front door. After an older woman who lived there came onto him, and he got a good long look at what he actually looked like (he intentionally avoided mirrors when getting dressed), then they were almost choked by that bloody plastic arm. She had then followed him as he left her flat and continued his search. He told her to forget him after she asked even more questions. Never mind that she seemed to constantly ask the right questions and walked away from her once again. 

That’s happened twice now. “Not happening,” he muttered to himself after shutting the Tardis door behind him. “Too many people have died or had their lives ruined because of me. Besides, I deserve to be on my own. Penance for killing my own kind.”

Silly Doctor… Thinking he had complete control over his own fate. As being a loner apparently was not meant to be. 

Because before he knew it, they were running through London hand in hand after he pulled off her boyfriend’s plastic head to trace the signal. And as the minutes ticked by, she continued to impress him with her perception and intelligence. And well the fact that he was an alien didn’t seem to faze her either.

Something drew him to want to keep her around, like this was meant to happen. It felt right for some reason, and it was then that the Doctor gave up his fight with fate and decided to ask her to come with him. Trying to entice her to join him in this renewed sense of adventure and wanderlust. He wanted to show her the Universe, let her walk on planets that she would have never known existed except maybe in a dream. 

“Don’t! He’s an alien. He’s a thing!” Mickey stammered out while still hiding behind Rose.

“He’s not invited,” the Doctor shot back. Not that he had ever planned for anyone else to join in. Plus, he didn’t have time to play babysitter. “What do you think?” he asked again. And when she didn’t immediately agree, he began listing all the boring things that she could do with her life as an alternative. 

Truth be told… Anxiety was creeping in that she was about to turn him down after he just plucked up the courage to ask her. 

“Is it always this dangerous?” she had asked, and it gave him a little hope that she was considering it. 

“Yeah,” he replied with a little grin. “Keep it cool, mate,” he told himself, “don’t look desperate now.”

Then Mickey grabbed Rose around the waist. “Yeah, I can’t. I gotta go find my Mum and someone’s gotta look after this stupid lump, so…” she trailed off with a fake smile. She wanted to go, she really did but who would look after her Mum and Mickey?

“Okay. See you around,” was the only thing he could say before retreating back into the Tardis. The rejection stung him hard, as he set a course for somewhere for them to float in a corner of the Universe. Again. 

He sat in a somewhat reflective state for a while. And by the end of it, he concluded that he needed her in his life. The whole time they were together, he felt the darkness around him lighten. He felt lighter and happier than he had in a long time. He was giving into the desire to have someone around that would fill the emptiness, but still keep up with him intellectually as well as physically when they would inevitably have to leg it out of somewhere.

“I only ask once,” he argued with himself while trying to move forward and shaking the idea from his mind. “I won’t go back and beg.” Her refusal had bruised his ego a little. People rarely turned his offer of travel down.

But then he realized something: Rose was meant to travel with him. She was supposed to be in his life. But there was good and bad in that revelation. The good was that Rose would join him eventually. The bad, however, meant that he had to break his rule and figure out a way to get her to join him. 

“Her ape mind was probably still processing everything. That’s why she must have said no.” He smirked while reasoning with himself, and he really couldn’t begrudge her for that. All she needed was time to understand what was on offer to her, and how much better her life could be.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed with a wide grin and a clap of his hands. “Time _and_ space. That’s what I’ll say. Who could say no to that?!”

Well… it worked. He had reappeared mere moments after he left. “By the way, did I mention that it also travels in time? he said after popping his head back outside. Then after giving a little grin, he stepped back while leaving the door open and the ball in her court. It was up to her now to decide if she was going to come aboard. He walked to the console and watched the door. His arms crossed as to not show how nervous he was about her decision. 

But right as he was going to try and sneak a peek outside to see if she was coming, he spied a flash of blonde hair coming towards him. He hid his glee as he quickly moved to stand casually by the console, tossing a glass orb. It was the start of a new adventure.

And oh, did they have adventures. She stuck by him no matter what. Didn’t matter that he took her to see her planet get roasted by the sun on their first adventure. Hey, in his defense - the loss of his planet was extremely raw, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. She even stayed after almost getting killed when they found trouble and boy did they have zero problem finding it.

But then he chose to send her away for her safety. He wasn’t going to get the Delta wave to work in time, and he promised Jackie Tyler that he would always see her home safe after that oopsie where he took her home twelve months later, instead of 12 hours later. Yeah, he’d never live that down…

Jack had gone down fighting. Everyone else had died because of the bloody Daleks. And just when he thought it was the end… When he believed that the Daleks would finally obliterate the Time Lords completely with his death… He heard his ship materializing. Wait, that shouldn’t be… He programmed it to be a one-way trip.

Rose had looked into the Tardis and piloted back to save him. She was beautiful yet terrifying at the same time. And then he heard two words that made his hearts skip a few beats. 

_Bad Wolf_

He again recalled the moment telling him why she chose the form she did, and the name. But then he remembered that she also used ‘bad wolf’ as well. It was a phrase they had seen in their travels, seeming to follow them wherever they went. And if that didn’t affirm his belief that she was meant to travel with him, although he still didn’t fully understand the why, it no longer mattered.

She had saved him, and then he returned the favor. Taking the power of the Tardis from her as his lips found hers. It was a race against time now. He had to get them out of here before the regeneration started. They didn’t have time to go back for Jack, and he would hate lying to Rose later by telling her that he found his own way home, but he really didn’t have the time to explain everything to her before he would fall into a regenerative coma after the change.

Oh, and he prayed to every deity that he knew of that she would figure it out after he changed in front of her. That his ever perceptive and intelligent Rose would accept the new face and body that would emerge, and they would continue their adventures. He tried his best to give a quick explanation as to what was going on. That he was dying, but still was cheating death. How he’d never see her again with this daft old face.

“Before I go, I just wanna tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.” He smiled at her in pride. Every inch of him was burning in an excruciating manner on the inside because she didn’t listen to him and came back. But he was still so damn proud of her. 

“And do you know what? So was I.” He grinned and when he couldn’t hold back any longer, he closed his eyes to let the inevitable take place. The inferno engulfed him, and at the very last second, just as the change began… The next face that was going to emerge looked slightly familiar. 

Although he couldn’t understand why.


End file.
